Nearly three weeks after a national firestorm erupted over the fatal police shooting of an unarmed African American teenager in Missouri, potential presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton broke her silence on the incident Thursday in San Francisco, saying it underscored deep economic challenges and justice system "inequities" the country needs to confront.

"Nobody wants to see our streets look like a war zone, not in America. We are better than that,'" Clinton told an audience of technology executives at the St. Regis Hotel.

"This is what happens when the bonds of trust and respect that hold any community together fray," she said. "We cannot ignore the inequities that exist in our justice system."

Clinton had been criticized by some pundits and progressives for remaining silent since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9. On Thursday, the former secretary of state praised her ex-boss President Obama for sending Attorney General Eric Holder to the St. Louis suburb after several nights of unrest, and for the Justice Department's decision to open a civil rights investigation into the shooting.

The probe is a critical step "to see that justice is done, to help this community in healing itself," Clinton said.

Clinton's observations about a divisive event that has brought race, poverty and justice issues to the fore came before an unlikely audience - about 150 Silicon Valley executives attending a conference of Nexenta Systems, a Santa Clara software storage firm.

She used the stage at the tony St. Regis not only to appeal to the tech sector's penchant for innovation and problem-solving, but to urge its leaders to reach out to communities far removed from Silicon Valley's wealth.

Execs' stake

Clinton told the executives that they have a stake in reducing the number of Americans who feel marginalized or shut out of economic opportunity.

"Watching the recent funeral for Michael Brown, my heart just broke for his family," Clinton said. "I also grieve for that community and many like it."

She added, "We don't have to go very far from here to find communities where opportunity and upward mobility feel like distant memories. ... Too many American families are losing ground and losing hope. We have lost the historic link between productivity gains and wage gains that people can actually see in their paychecks and feel in their wallets."

For many people, Clinton said, "the American dream of opportunity and equality feels further and further out of reach."

Losing out in tech

Among them are women, Clinton told the mostly male audience of tech bosses. She pointed to widespread observations that women have "gone backwards" in the technology sector in recent years.

"We had more women graduating with degrees in STEM subjects 30 years ago than we do today," Clinton said, using the acronym for science, technology, engineering and math. "The government can do some things like more STEM education ... (but) most of the solution rests with the private sector, with individual companies."

On immigration, a show of hands revealed that nearly half the executives were foreign-born, prompting Clinton to renew her call for comprehensive immigration reform.

"There are a lot of people in public office who hear only the loud voices on the negative side, and oftentimes it is out of a place of fear," she said.